The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

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Monday, April 4, 2016

Free speech is hardly being respected on campus, anti-Semitism is.

Anti-Semitic hate speech has become common on American college
campuses, where the classroom is used to promote radical ideals and
students with dissenting viewpoints are ridiculed and harassed. Leftist
academics abuse their positions as teachers to disseminate anti-Israel
propaganda while their institutions provide safe-havens for Jew-hatred
misrepresented as political commentary.

They claim their words
are shielded by the First Amendment, but deny the same constitutional
protection to those with contrary views. Jewish students and advocates
are routinely slandered and denied any forum for rebuttal, and when
progressive invective leads to physical violence, faculty stooges often
blame the victims.

The annual spectacle of Israel Apartheid Week
shows how easily anti-Semitism is accepted and how firmly traditional
stereotypes are entrenched in multicultural ideology. Demagogues on
both the right and left have traditionally used straw enemies as
bogeymen to generate support for radical programs, and anti-Jewish
hatred has always been an effective tool for riling the masses –
particularly in Europe and the Muslim Mideast. But whereas
conservatives in America have confronted the past and denounced
anti-Semitism, the left continues to demonize Jews as it justifies
radical Islam and delegitimizes the Jewish State.

Despite the
myth of progressive tolerance, the left has always been ambivalent
regarding Jewish religion and nationality, which were reviled by many of
the fathers of European liberalism from Voltaire on down. Considering
today’s progressive affinity for enlightened churches that promote
liberal values and for Islamists who do not, there is clearly more to
the left’s defamation of Jewish religion and nationhood than political
ideology. How else to explain progressive sympathy for radical Islam
despite its rejection of democratic ideals? In the absence of similar
core values, this “red-green alliance” seems more bound by common hatred
of Jews, Israel, and western society.

For one week during the
year, Israel Apartheid Week brings into sharp focus the anti-Semitism
that is prevalent on so many college campuses year-round, as evidenced
by revisionist history taught in classrooms and Boycott, Divestment and
Sanctions activities endorsed by faculty and students alike.
Anti-Semitic incidents have been reported at some of the most elite
universities, where dubious speech is often defended as freedom of
expression.

Despite codes of conduct prohibiting hate speech at many such institutions, Jew-hatred is frequently heard but rarely punished.

The
recent kerfuffle over controversial comments by a professor at Oberlin
College in Ohio illustrates the ubiquity of focused hatred in academia.
In a series of posts on social media, Israel was blamed for 9/11, the
Charlie Hebdo massacre, and the ascendancy of the Islamic State. Such
allegations echo classical anti-Jewish conspiracy theories that have
persisted for generations and have become conflated with Israel through
constant repetition over the internet.

Rather than denounce these comments outright, Oberlin’s president wrote in part:

Cultivating
academic freedom can be difficult and at times painful … The principles
of academic freedom and freedom of speech are not just principles to
which we turn to face these challenges, but also the very practices that
ensure we can develop meaningful responses to prejudice. This freedom
enables Oberlin’s faculty and students to think deeply about and to
engage in frank, open discussion of ideas that some may find deeply
offensive.

Intentionally or not, these words dignified the
offensive postings by implying they constituted an “open discussion of
ideas” rather than a recitation of repellant calumnies. But when does
prejudice ever serve such lofty purpose? Would Oberlin College – or any
other liberal arts university – show such equanimity if students or
faculty were to post messages deemed misogynistic, homophobic or racist
to any minority other than the Jews?

The reluctance to condemn
anti-Semitism stands in stark contrast to the punishments routinely
dispensed to those who use politically-incorrect language or express
conservative viewpoints. Campus radicals who shout “death to Israel”
while bullying Jewish students hypocritically demand “safe-spaces” where
they can be free from “micro-aggression,” a term that appears intended
to stifle any expression upsetting to their worldview. They seem to
believe the First Amendment protects only their speech, not that of
their opponents, and in this regard they sound far more totalitarian
than the conservatives they frequently accuse of fascism.

They
often invoke the First Amendment to defend hateful speech in any forum,
though it actually applies only to the government. The Constitution
does not recognize a right to incite or harass, and does not require
private individuals or entities to entertain speech they find abhorrent.
The language of the First Amendment simply provides that:

Congress
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to
assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

This
language on its face applies only to government. It does not require
private citizens or organizations to countenance odious or threatening
speech, particularly when it impinges on the rights and sensitivities of
others. The U.S. Supreme Court has long recognized the right to limit
speech in the workplace, the home, and private settings – and in fact
has acknowledged that even the government may sometimes restrict speech
and the press during times of war or national emergency.

Ironically,
some of the very universities that permit anti-Jewish agitation on
their campuses also maintain disciplinary codes that prohibit speech
deemed offensive to women and minorities, and mandate punishments
without due process for real or perceived violations. Such rules
protect only those whom progressives deem worthy of protection, however,
and are applied neither equally nor meritoriously. Any criticism of
Muslims or Arabs is treated as discriminatory, though they do not
constitute a world minority, while Jews – who represent the most
persecuted minority on earth – are accorded little or no protection from
harassment and abuse.

The First Amendment does not require
private universities to allow repugnant speech, though in their attempt
to emulate Constitutional principles many institutions choose to permit
and even facilitate it as a privilege. However, institutions that allow
such speech by right or privilege should be obligated out of fairness
to provide equal time for dissenting views, particularly by those
seeking to defend themselves against abuse justified as free speech in
the first place. The failure to do so evidences gross hypocrisy. Or
willful complicity. Regardless of whether anti-Semitic programs are
permitted under the guise of constitutional right or elective privilege,
colleges and universities that deny equal time to those under attack
are complying with the spirit and letter of neither.

Educational
institutions often justify anti-Jewish speech and programs as political
expression, and progressives do likewise by artificially distinguishing
“anti-Zionism” from anti-Semitism and equating Jewish nationalism with
bigotry against Arabs. However, simply designating offensive speech
“political” does not magically erase baleful motive or intent,
especially when content is premised on false narratives and malignant
stereotypes.

Those who deny Israel’s cultural, historical and
ethnographic antecedents can do so only by relying on
politically-charged revisionism. The propensity for western
progressives to embrace the Palestinian cause by ignoring thousands of
years of Jewish history would be difficult to explain in the absence of
anti-Semitic sensibilities. In belittling the Jewish connection to
Israel, the political left baldly rewrites history with a Nazi-like
audacity reminiscent of the Big Lie.

Perhaps the biggest lie
of all is the canard that the Arab-Israeli conflict is caused by
Israel’s refusal to cede territory for the creation of a Palestinian
state. Those who claim thus seem to forget that Arab-Muslim
rejectionism long predated Israel’s liberation of Judea, Samaria and
Gaza in 1967, and that there was no demand for an independent Palestine
during the nearly twenty years when Jordan and Egypt controlled these
territories.

In reality, such a country never existed and
Jerusalem was never the capital of a sovereign Arab or Muslim state. But
rather than discuss these issues honestly, progressive critics of
Israel accuse all who raise them of Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias.

Nevertheless,
the only sovereign nation ever to exist between the Jordan River and
Mediterranean Sea was Jewish, though modern Israel comprises only a
portion of the ancient homeland. After the British gave eighty percent
of the Palestine Mandate to the Hashemites in 1922 and the Arab nations
rejected partition in 1947, the Jews were left with only twenty percent
of their birthright. And yet the international community persists in
hawking a two-state solution that would leave Israel with only a
fraction of her ancestral lands and indefensible borders. There would
be no peace even if Israel were to submit, however, because the majority
of Palestinians reject the legitimacy of any Jewish state in the
Mideast.

​Progressive academics who vilify Israel while ignoring
Arab-Muslim culpability in creating and perpetuating conflict in the
Mideast are peddling propaganda, not truth. They sow seeds of hatred
and abuse positions of authority to intimidate and indoctrinate without
fear of censure. Though the First Amendment protects even reprehensible
speech from government censorship, it does not prohibit private
citizens from identifying hate-speech for what it is and shaming its
purveyors. And there’s certainly plenty of shame to go around on
America’s college campuses.